The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (41 page)

“It’s him!” he exclaimed excitedly. “It’s my
papa!”

“No shit, kid?” Heinlich laughed. He must
have had a mental telepathy moment yesterday or some shit like
that, to have what he told the boy to come true like this. If there
was still a lottery he would have rushed out and played it.

“It’s him! It’s him!” Jeremy cried again, all
doubt vanishing from his mind. The Humvee turned the corner onto
the road and raced up to the gate with everyone inside feeling the
elation that emanated from the excited boy.

Lamar watched the group as it strode down the
road and entered the compound. He hadn’t expected another group of
refugees. He had spotted them as soon as they came into view off of
the highway and had formulated a new plan in his head. He gave
orders to Crazy-8 and Roshawna to signal the rest of the crew to
not harm the women, especially the tall, dark homegirl with the
slammin’ body.

Ah
gonna
make
that
bitch
mah
queen
, he told himself.
The tall cracker and the kid he didn’t give a shit about.

He moved up to the front door of the building
and stayed out of sight, ready to move out when they got within
range. He knew the rest of his crew would be waiting for him to
make his move first and they would bum-rush the group on his
signal. He spotted the gats that every one of the group ‘cept that
little white kid carried, so he knew he would have to work fast
before they could react and return fire.

“They ain’t spectin’ a thing.” He laughed to
himself and nodded to Crazy-8, who stood on the other side of the
door frame. None of the newcomers had a single one of their guns
ready to go in their hands. It would be just like pinging ducks in
a shooting gallery.

The group of refugees stopped halfway to the
storefront and turned, looking out toward the highway. Lamar became
worried that one of his crew had stuck their damn fool head up and
been seen, so he pulled open the door and stepped out.

“Time we smoke sum cracker ass, cuz,” he told
Crazy-8 as he walked out into the bright sunshine, extending his
Glock out on its side to the extent of his reach as he strode
confidently toward the group that now had their backs turned to
him. Crazy-8 grabbed the Tec-9 off the table and followed him out.
It was too late to turn back when Lamar heard the sound of the
engine approaching the gate.

Jeremy’s attention was locked on his father
as the Humvee slowed to a stop at the entryway and he launched
himself from the vehicle and ran to the gate, yanking off the
chain. “Papa, it’s me!” he yelled muscling open the gate on its
squeaky wheels. The long-haired man stood with his mouth hanging
open and a stunned look on his shaven face.

“It’s me! Jeremy!” he yelled again, racing
through the opening with the Humvee quick on his heels. Steven took
a couple of tentative steps forward as his mind processed what he
was seeing and hearing. With the sudden realization that what he
was seeing wasn’t an exhaustion-induced illusion, he broke into a
run toward the boy, a grin splitting his face as he called out
joyously to his son.

Tears blurred Jeremy’s vision and he rushed
toward his father, his arms thrown wide. Suddenly a look of
confusion shattered his father’s happy visage and the man stumbled
and nearly fell. He looked aghast at Jeremy and his face turned
ghostly white.

“Jeremy,” he croaked painfully, and then
tumbled forward onto the ground.

It was only then that Jeremy heard the sounds
of gunfire around him. In two more strides he reached his father’s
side and gasped when he saw the two red blossoms of blood seeping
through the ragged holes in the back of his shirt. With strength
unexpected for such a small boy, he rolled the man over. Steven,
his eyes wide with pain and fear, gasped for a breath and a fine
mist of blood shot from his mouth when a ragged breath escaped from
his lungs. He gazed into his boy’s eyes and tried to raise a hand
to touch his cheek, but his strength failed him.

“I love you, son,” he said in a barely
audible whisper.

Jeremy grabbed his hand and held it to his
cheek. “Papa, I love you. You’re going to be okay!” he cried,
oblivious to the events unfolding around him.

Suddenly, Kera was beside him and threw
herself across Steven.

“Nooo!” she wailed, a heart-wrenching cry,
wrapping her hands around his face and holding his head up.

“We’ve got to stop the bleeding!” She slid a
hand under her lover’s body through the spreading pool of pink,
frothy blood and probed for the bullet wounds.

“Papa, don’t leave me alone again.” Jeremy
held his father’s hand to his cheek, wetting it with his tears as
he held on tightly, as if by sheer will, he could pull his papa
back from whatever brink he teetered on.

Steven weakly shook his head and tried to
speak as blood welled up in his mouth. He coughed feebly and tried
to speak again. Kera laid her ear next to his lips, her dark hair
cascading like a black waterfall over his face.

“I love you, Kera,” he whispered in one last
exhalation and then died.

Sergeant Heinlich didn’t have the
tunnel-vision that so narrowed Jeremy’s view of the world as the
boy focused on his father after opening the gate. He saw the two
men with pants hanging off their waists and the handgun held
gangster style in the hand of the big man in the lead as he strode
purposely out of the building. The other raised what appeared to be
a Tec-9 one handed and pointed it at the group. He also became
aware of more movement on their flanks.

An
ambush
! his mind screamed
while his body was already leaping into action. He tapped Sarah on
the shoulder as the first rounds smacked off of the Humvee’s
armored windshield and he threw himself up into the shielded .50
caliber gunner’s nest in the center of the vehicle. A belt was
already fed into the machine gun and with a quick flick of his arm
he pulled the charging handle while rotating the gun on its pintle
to find his first target. He depressed the trigger and watched as
it virtually tore in two a young black man wielding a semi-auto
AK-47 next to a dump bed truck on their right flank. Below, Sarah
fired off a three round burst at some other target from behind her
open door, and then the firefight started in earnest.

Katherine fell to the ground, pushing Angela
beneath her when she heard the first shots being fired from behind
her. She heard more rounds whiz by her ears and saw puffs of dirt
shoot up from the ground nearby. Angela screamed in terror while
Katy struggled to get her rifle unpinned from between her chest and
the little girl. She rolled to her side, freeing the carbine, and
had to spend a fraction of a second remembering where the safety
switch was before flicking it off. A grossly obese black girl was
calmly walking out of the building that was right in front of Katy,
shooting a frightening looking rifle from her hip. Katy shoved the
short-barreled carbine in front of her, steadied it by grasping the
forward grip with her left hand and sighted down the open sights at
the hulk of a woman. With shaking hands, she pulled the trigger and
saw a window shatter behind and to the right of the fat woman. She
deftly adjusted her aim and the next round tore into a meaty arm,
knocking the woman sideways. Her next rounds stitched a pattern up
the fat woman’s abdomen sending her toppling backwards like a
felled tree. Dust exploded in spurts around her body and she
spotted a man holding one-handed something that looked like a
machine gun pointed at her and saw the blasts of flame from its
muzzle as he shot it. Before she could swing her rifle around she
felt a hot stinging in her calf, like someone had jammed a red-hot
poker into her leg.

The man stumbled backwards and the firearm
flew from his hand. He reached down and held his hands over his
stomach, blood gushing through his fingers. He looked up at
Dontela, who stood next to Katy holding the smoking rifle, then his
legs gave out and he dropped to his knees. Dontela sighted in on
his face and squeezed her trigger. The bullet tore into his skull
and fragmented, sending skin, bone, and brains flying through the
air. Crazy-8’s lifeless body fell over backwards. Katy shoved
Angela over to the shelter of the wheelbarrow where it had toppled
when Kera had sprung out of it in her haste to get to Steven,
trying to get the little girl out of the line of fire.

Lamar strode up to the tall black girl as she
fired her second shot at Crazy-8. He swung his pistol hard into her
temple. The girl’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she
collapsed to the ground in a heap. He trod confidently ahead,
focusing on the fallen white man who had some cracker kid and a
pretty dark-haired girl hovering over him. The gun battle exploded
around him as his peeps engaged the Army Hummer parked right inside
the gate, but he paid it no mind. His eyes were narrowed in
rage.

Where
da
fuck
dem
motha
-
fuckers
come
from
?

He approached the three white people on the
ground. It was supposed to be his fuckin’ ambush, not these
punk-ass Army cracker motha-fuckers surprising him! His crew was
getting slaughtered around him as the big gun on top of the Hummer
banged away into their bodies, tearing through any cover that his
gang sought. He had not seen his captains fall and had no idea
where they were.

Dem
nigga’s
betta
not
-
a
run
off
!

Bullets zipped passed him like angry hornets,
but Lamar felt invincible. “Ain’t no one gonna fade da
gangsta-king!” he screamed out loud, reaching down and wrapping his
powerful fingers into the dark-haired beauty’s long hair while
putting his pistol against the young white kid who was oblivious to
Lamar’s presence. He yanked the woman roughly to her feet by her
hair and pulled the trigger on the Glock.

Nothing happened.

His eyes focused on his pistol and he saw
that the slide was locked back and the magazine was empty. He
didn’t remember emptying the gun while he had walked invincibly
through the parking lot firing at anything that was white and
moved.

“Fuck dis shit!” he growled and made to slam
the gun onto the back of the boy’s head.

He felt the cold steel pressing against his
cheek and saw that it was the pretty young bitch that had a gun
pressed against him.

“No! Fuck
this
shit asshole!” the girl
hissed at him.

He scowled at her. Her gat couldn’t hurt him!
The gold caps of his teeth reflected brightly in the sun with his
evil demented grin, and then the gold seemed to leap from his mouth
as Kera squeezed the trigger of Steven’s Sig-Sauer that she had
pulled from his holster as the black man had approached. The bullet
tore through the roof of the gangster’s mouth and out his temple in
a burst of blood. He took a couple of steps backwards, his smile a
ghastly remnant of what it had been a moment ago, then tipped
sideways and fell heavily to the ground while blood pulsed in a
thin jet from his ruined skull.

Kera’s arm fell heavily to her side, the gun
slipping from her fingers, and she collapsed unconscious to the
ground while the sounds of the gunfight tapered off around her.

Jeremy stayed hunched over his father’s body
in a paralysis of shock, still unaware of the carnage around him.
He hoped that this was some horrible nightmare that he would wake
from up at any moment. He promised God that he would be eternally
grateful if all this was merely a figment of his imagination. Only
when Sarah knelt next to him and took him in her warm, soft arms
did the reality sink in. Then the sobs began racking his entire
body while he clung to the girl in a desperation of utter sorrow
and loneliness.

Chapter Thirteen

Shavers and Reese rushed to the ladder that led to
the roof where Carroll and Pickeral had the afternoon watch.
Shavers rushed up the ladder first, closely followed by the
ex-Special Ops soldier. They burst out into the soft light of the
mid-afternoon sun, which was dimmed by high cirrus clouds.

They raced to where the two soldiers stood
along the edge of the roof, armed and staring off toward the
northeast.

“Okay, show me where they are!” Shavers
demanded as he came alongside them.

Carroll lowered the binoculars and pointed
toward Churchville Avenue. “They headed back that way. We saw them
on the road behind that thick hedgerow.”

“Same MO as the ones I saw yesterday,” Reese
growled. “They’re fucking hunting us.”

“Bullshit,” Carroll replied. “They ain’t
nothing except mindless zombies.”

“Were they acting like the fucking crazies we
have come to know and love?” Reese asked sarcastically. He stared
off into the distance, chomping on the ever-present stub of a
cigar. Carroll only shook his head in answer, still not convinced
that the monsters were changing.

Shavers took the glasses from Carroll and
searched the indicated area. “I don’t like this shit one bit.
Something’s going on with those spawns of Satan, something that
only spells badly for us.”

The radio in Pickeral’s hand crackled and
they heard Murchison’s voice calling. Pickeral replied asking what
was up.

“Hey, Charlie, is the First Sergeant up there
with you guys?”

Charlotte answered in the affirmative and
handed the radio to Shavers.

“This is Shavers.”

Camilla came back on and told him that
Sergeant Heinlich had checked in a short time ago and the shit had
hit the fan at the refugee center. Multiple casualties. He was
requesting a Stryker to transport survivors and wounded.

“Shit!” Shavers yelled. “Can this day get any
worse?”